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Klara's Katowice Blog: Saturday

From the player party to deuce points, highways, the No.1 tip for sliding on clay and what keeps her motivated, Klara Zakopalova brings us her last blog of the week from... Prague?

Published April 13, 2013 12:00

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Hello again everyone... from Prague!

I have a few days to catch up on in today's blog...

First of all, the player party on Wednesday night was great as always. We had a great dinner with all the Czech players. We were talking and having so much fun. But it ended a little bit early - we had to go back to our rooms around 10pm because we had matches the next day and had to get ready!

The next day unfortunately Renata and I lost our doubles match to Birnerova and Buryachok. It was a very tough match. We had some chances in the first set - two set points - but we were a little bit unlucky at that moment and lost the first set in a tie-break. And then in the second set we had a lot of close games but lost all the deuce points, and eventually we lost the match, 76(5) 60.

After the match on Thursday we went back home - and by back home I mean really back home! I drove three and a half hours back to Prague. It was an easy drive that day - the whole drive was on the highway with no traffic at all, and no policemen either :-) So we could drive quite fast... :-)

Thank you all very much for reading this week and sending in all of your great questions - I'll answer some of them here. And I hope to talk to you all again soon. Have a great weekend!

You are playing your best tennis now - what keeps you motivated? Christos, CyprusI think my goals keep me motivated. I have a goal in my mind and I'm giving my 100% to reach it, and also my coach is helping me with the motivation - sometimes I'm sad after a bad loss, and he is the one who keeps me motivated and always brings me back to the practice courts for the hard work :-)

Do you have any tips on becoming a better slider on clay? YukiMy tip is very simple: the most important thing is not to be scared of sliding on the court. It is safe - it just looks strange, but it's fun to slide on clay. But it's probably better to ask this question to my favorite player, Rafa Nadal - for sure he has better tips about this :-)

Do you wish there was a WTA event in the Czech Republic? AlexeiIt's a dream for me to play a WTA event in Prague one more time in my life... but at this time of financial crises it is very tough to find sponsors for such a big event. But you never know, at least we are very glad to have a $100,000 ITF Women's Circuit event in May in my home club, Sparta Praha. It's always a very strong tournament so I hope it can become a WTA tournament one day...